UN tells Turkey to lift state of emergency ahead of polls

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday urged Turkey to lift an ongoing state of emergency ahead of the next month's snap presidential and general elections.

"Protracted restrictions on the human rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and association are incompatible with the conduct of a credible electoral process in Turkey," Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in an online statement.

A nationwide state of emergency has been in place in the country since 2016 when an attempted military coup failed to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

It was extended for the seventh time last month, only a day after Erdogan called for elections to be held on June 24, a year and a half ahead of the scheduled date in 2019. The unexpected move took opposition parties by surprise and is likely to limit their ability to campaign effectively.

The UN rights chief said the government's extension of the emergency laws was a suspension of the country's obligations under several articles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which Turkey has been an official signatory since 2003. The international treaty deals with freedoms of expression, assembly, and association as well as committing participating states to guarantee certain civil and political rights to its citizens.

“Over the past two years, through successive states of emergency, the space for dissent in Turkey has shrunk considerably, with at least 29 more journalists jailed on terrorism offenses in just the last week of April alone,” Zeid said.

“It is difficult to imagine how credible elections can be held in an environment where dissenting views and challenges to the ruling party are penalized so severely,” his statement read.

It continued by claiming that a heavy police presence and arrests during recent May Day protests in Istanbul and elsewhere demonstrated the severely limited space for freedom of peaceful assembly in Turkey.

“Elections held in an environment where democratic freedoms and the rule of law are compromised would raise questions about their legitimacy, and result in more uncertainty and instability.”

Last year, a controversial referendum on whether or not to give more authority to Erdogan's office was held under the state of emergency, a move that reinforced the opposition's criticism of the outcome, which saw over 51 percent voting in favor of the expanded powers.

Editing by John J. Catherine